The Apocalypse Crusade 2 (18 page)

“We have orders to shoot all escapees,” Meeks told Deckard. “What do you think about that?”

“I think if you had the guts to shoot, you would’ve done it already,” Deckard replied. “Instead you’re going to march us right back to the tent. It’s just right back there.”

“No, I don’t think so. Not when I have you dead to rights. Not when I can finally deal justice out properly. You see, I am just about sick to death of watching the bad guys walk on technicalities and I’m sure you have your excuses ready and your lawyers all lined up, but you haven’t seen what I’ve seen. You haven’t seen the bodies and the walking dead…and the blood! An hour ago, I was at Kingston. You don’t know what it’s like there. So, no, we aren’t going to walk to the tent. We’re going to save the American people a long drawn out trial. Now, put the girl down, nice and easy so we can do this in a humane manner.”

On his shoulder, Thuy was altogether lifeless and she was like a corpse when he laid her down. “You don’t need to do this,” Deckard said. His gut went queasy as he took a swift glance around. They were close enough to the command post to see that it was deserted. The skeleton crew was busy chasing down the escapees. It was just the three of them.

“I do, actually,” Meeks said quietly. “For all those people out there who will never get justice.” He pulled the trigger and even as he did, Deckard still couldn’t believe it. He was sure Meeks was just bluffing. He was FBI, he was the law and this…this was straight up murder. The bullet traveled the short distance between them and buried itself deep.

Anna heard the kill shot and a few minutes later, she would walk through the drying blood. She and Eng had gotten the furthest: a half mile through the forest. She had no clue where she was or in which direction she was running; for all she knew, she was running back into the quarantine zone and that would’ve been just fine with her. Anything was better than the sure death that the tent represented. She paused at the sound of the gun, wondering who had bought it.

She hoped it was Thuy.

Soon enough, she had her own problems as a series of Humvees drove past them. She and Eng hunkered down, their chests working like billows. “Well?” Anna asked Eng. “Aren’t you trained for this?
Escape and Evade?
”

“This way,” he said cutting to their left. They didn’t see the soldier who had been dropped off in the wake of the Humvees and he didn’t see them until they were twenty feet away. He immediately opened up with his rifle sending a slew of bullets their way. Luckily for Anna, his aim in his MOPP suit was atrocious. Bullets went everywhere and the sound of the gun in the still forest was like thunder.

“We give up!” Anna screamed at the top of her lungs. She was so loud that Chuck heard her from two hundred yards away as he and Stephanie were being led back to the tent at gunpoint. It made him smirk, however it died away when he saw the blood.

The tent was a glum place when all the prisoners were rounded up. The absence of Deckard and Thuy made the tent seem much larger, not that they could’ve paced. The prisoners, including Wilson and Burke, who hadn’t gotten very far at all, were tied hand and foot with black cord.

“Are you satisfied?” Stephanie spat at Anna.

All things considered, she was satisfied. She had managed to get the very dangerous Tyler out of the tent and the two people who were key in any prosecution against her had been shot trying to escape. “Actually, yes,” she answered, wearing a viper’s grin. In the back of her mind, she began to wonder how she could get rid of the rest of them, Eng included. If they were all to die, she would be in the free and clear. “Quite satisfied.”

At about the time Special Agent Meeks was aiming his weapon into Ryan Deckard’s chest, General Collins was sipping scalding black coffee in the situation room, thirty feet below the West Wing of the White House. Irritatingly, he wasn’t drinking the coffee out of a mug; it was being served out of a teacup. The cup was annoyingly tiny and it had faded humming birds on it. The President explained it was a pattern picked out by Edith Wilson, the second of Woodrow Wilson’s First Ladies. This did nothing to stem Collins’ annoyance.

“Oh,” was all Collins said in response. He had literally a thousand things he had to be doing right then and drinking coffee from a ridiculous teacup just wasn’t one of them. Neither was giving a briefing, though this wasn’t exactly a briefing, it felt more like a trial. He sat practically alone on one side of a tremendous table. There were women and men on his side but the closest sat four chairs down, afraid they’d be hit by some of the shit that was almost certainly going to be hurled his way when the President exploded on him.

Directly across from Collins sat the President in a sharp, blue suit. The man had the looks of a weathered actor: still handsome but sagging and wrinkled at the edges. On one side of him sat the Vice-President, and on the other was Marty Aleman, his Chief of Staff. And then there were the Secretaries of this cabinet and that, and further down the line were generals and admirals, stiff with medals and self-importance. Political appointees, every one of them, including the military officers.

People always assumed that the military was all about blood and guts and were promoted simply on the virtue of their skill or knowledge and that was true to a certain extent, or at least to a certain rank. Eventually rank becomes political with both parties advancing men and women who align politically.

Collins was looking at a group of handpicked sycophants who would agree to anything the President wanted.

Normally, being around so much brass and so many suits, made him a touch nervous, but he was just too damned tired to be nervous. Besides the questions, were of a tedious nature: Are the infected persons dangerous? Do they represent a danger to the public at large? How contagious are they? Are they really that contagious? Really? Have you seen one with your own eyes?

“Yes Sir, I have seen one of the infected individuals up close and, in fact, I killed it with a pistol I had borrowed from a state trooper. This was after it came at me in a threatening manner, of course. It survived three gunshots to the torso and kept coming as if it hadn’t even felt a thing. Hopefully that will put to rest the question of them being dangerous.”

“And you killed it with a head shot?” the President asked. It was an odd question, but most of his were. His Chief of Staff had given him a list of questions that only he was allowed to ask and they were not in any particular order. When the briefing was completed, the answers would be edited so that the president would come out in the best light and then the final, much shorter product would be disseminated to the media. Things were moving so quickly that the media was demanding more than low-level aides stuttering and making excuses.

Part of the problem was that the very idea of zombies was just so ludicrous, so undignified that the White House had actually been hoping that the media would find a way to break the story without the military feeding it to them. But then the press had been scooped by Cody Cullin and his YouTube videos. The first had been of the massacre and the next two were grainy night shots of zombie attacks. Ever since then, the press had been scrambling to catch up. What they were getting, such as the glaring errors in readiness of the 42
nd
and the rumors of a dozen or more massacres, was all negative.

The filmed trial/briefing was Marty Aleman’s way of getting in front of the situation by turning the focus on General Collins, and having the President acting as chief prosecutor.

“Can you explain how the situation began and what steps…” The President paused as Marty Aleman whispered into his ear. With a crooked smile, the President began again: “I’m sorry. I’m not used to reading questions from flashcards. Are we sure we can’t use teleprompters?”

Marty looked pained by the question. “No. Absolutely not. There can’t be a hint of indecision over this. You have to come across tough.”

“I never knew flashcards were this tough,” the President joked. He was leader of the free world because he could read a speech off a teleprompter like nobody’s business and he was always quick with a joke—hardly the proper qualifications in General Collins view. “What I meant to say was… Can you explain how the situation began and what steps you took to contain the issue as commander of the 42
nd
Infantry Division?”

Collins cleared his throat before answering. “The situation began at a pharmaceutical research center south east of Poughkeepsie, New York…” He went through a long song and dance. It was forty wasted minutes repeating information that wasn’t new to anyone in the room. Next, he spoke about the call-up of the 42
nd
, its failures and its successes. There were very few of the latter and the initial ones could be chalked up to the timely intervention of Courtney Shaw. Even though her interference had been completely illegal, she had saved Collins at least two hours allowing him to scatter a few hundred men around the perimeter. He had no clue how many of them were still alive; not many, he was sure. And yet they had held long enough for him to throw up more fixed lines using the bare bones of skeleton battalions.

At one point, the President stopped him. He glanced down at one of his note cards and said: “I see you’ve placed the majority of your division along the southern end of the perimeter. Is this where most of the danger lies?”

Most of my division? Collins wanted to ask. He was finding out the hard way that he wasn’t really in charge of “his” division. The 42
nd
had major elements in three different states and thus had three different “commanders in chiefs.” On paper, he had just over eleven-thousand men in his division. A third of them were still in Vermont because the Governor hadn’t yet called them to service. They were simply on alert.

The Governor of New Jersey had waffled for a few hours, just long enough for the traffic jams in and out of lower New York to fuse into an unbreakable mass of steel and glass. Most of the 50
th
Combat Brigade was sitting along the side of a dozen crammed highways waiting for the Blackhawks to come and get them. And that was a hell of a mess as well. There was currently a fight on the aviation side of things about who owned what air space in what state. His operations officer, instead of doing his normal duty, was squabbling with three state governments, as well as FEMA and the FFA, and of course, the airlines. It was enough to make a man just walk away from the whole affair.

All of this was detailed in his report, but this was the President of the United States and if he wanted answers to asinine questions, he would get them. “There is danger in allowing a single infected person out of the quarantine zone, but yes, due to the population concentration around New York, I felt that the southern zone had to be given first priority. If you will take a look at the screen you will see the disposition of units…”

“Another question, General,” the President said, interrupting. “Your units were in place in record time, were they not?”

“I don’t think Guinness keeps these sorts of records,” Collins replied, blandly. The President had expected a simple “Yes”, now he blinked in confusion.

“Answer the question,” the Chief of Staff snapped. He tried to glare at the general, but Collins was like ice and the glare faltered in the face of it. “To make it easier, compare it to the National Guard response to Hurricane Katrina. Go.”

Go? Who tells a three star general to go? Collins took a slow deliberate sip of his tea before answering the canned question. “There are some parallels between this situation and the one that occurred in New Orleans. The greatest difference, at least so far, is that New York Governor Stimpson didn’t vacillate when confronted with the issue and made a command decision. This allowed me to get a jump on things, though it may not look like it from an outsider’s point of view, we are getting up to speed relatively quickly. The logistics are a nightmare. The majority of the men in my division have to be flown, eleven men at a time in helicopters from up to four hundred miles away in order to be put in place in and around Poughkeepsie.”

“It’s a miracle of modern logistics,” the President said, suddenly.

“Yes,” Collins agreed, partially because that’s what the Chief of Staff wanted and partially because it was true. Everything he had said was true. Compared to the other governors, Stimpson had acted like a real leader and had made difficult decisions in minutes rather than hours. And the horrible logistical issues were being overcome by screaming, pleading, and the frequent display of weaponry by men with hard faces and harder hearts. Currently, Collins had a hundred and fifty nine Blackhawks either in the air or on the ground being loaded or refueled. His staff at the Command Post were working like madmen trying to leapfrog them over three states to snatch up men and equipment stranded by the traffic jams. By a rather generous reading of the Insurrection Act, the U.S. Army was “lending” another hundred helicopters to the 42
nd
. They were arriving in dribs and drabs, frequently with empty tanks, making his fuel situation enough to turn his silver hair, white.

The rest of his officers were performing under equally trying circumstances. So precariously was the line being held that the men were being dropped off by the choppers without regard for unit cohesion. In one half mile section just north of West Point, there were squads of a dozen companies holding the line. This made all forms of communications and resupply extremely difficult. The President didn’t seem to want to hear about this, however. He began asking questions concerning the massacres: who was to blame? Why weren’t the men trained to deal with an anxious population? What precautions were being put into place to keep more of them from occurring?

At this last question, Collins sat stony-faced. Had they not been listening to a thing he had said? He didn’t have time to hold training classes on what to do when civilians start shooting you in the face! Of course the only real answer to the President’s question was that time would fix the issue for him. A few more hours and there wouldn’t be anyone left “alive” in The Zone.

The president began to ask about casualties, making Collins squirm in his chair. He didn’t have the numbers on hand. Nobody did since nobody knew who was where. Collins gave a non-answer: “It’s hard to say at this point.”

This didn’t seem to faze the President. “That many?” he demanded, theatrically outraged. Collins blinked in a most owl-like fashion. Hadn’t the man heard his answer? Or was this going to be spliced in somehow to make sure everyone knew that the President was as angry as they were? Collins had no clue.

One of the generals, a man with four gleaming stars on his collar, broke in on Collins’ thoughts. The general’s chest was so decorated with commendations that it was somewhat absurd. He gave a shifty glance to Marty Aleman and said, quickly: “Your eastern border seems wide open.”

It wasn’t a question. It was a very true statement of fact. Collins wanted to shrug, but one didn’t shrug to a four star general when one was only a lieutenant general. And yet what could he say? “The situation north of New York City warranted an immediate response. We had to stop the flow of refugees out of The Zone before someone infected got through.” And so far, they had, miraculously.

“And now?” the general asked, speaking fast before the president could ask another useless question. “We have been monitoring the situation and from all the chatter, it seems men are being diverted to the western and northern perimeters and zero are being allocated in the east. Do I need to remind you just how close Hartford, Connecticut is? If Hartford goes then all of Connecticut goes.” He gestured at the map to add to his point.

Collins didn’t look. He didn’t need to. He knew precisely what the map showed: a few hundred cooks, medics, signalmen, forward observers, and communications specialists holding a line ten miles long; his command post had been stripped of every nonessential man. And Collins didn’t need to be reminded what would happen if the disease made it into Hartford. It wasn’t just Connecticut that would fall, with no natural barrier, Rhode Island would be overrun in days, and then the entire southern border of Massachusetts would be laid bare.

“We are aware of the situation and I have made this known to Governor Stimpson,” was the only way Collins could respond.

The President forgot the stiff white cards long enough to ask: “What was his reply?”

Uh-oh. They had just strayed into dangerous waters. Collins couldn’t lie nor could he tap dance around such a direct question. “The Governor said that Connecticut would have to look out for itself. But that was only…”

“That’s preposterous!” the President cried. “You get men on that border this instant! There are a million people in the greater Hartford area. They can’t be exposed to this…this plague.”

“I wish I could obey that order, but I can’t,” Collins answered.

Marty Aleman was just standing up, thinking that he had to get the briefing back under control when the President lost his cool. The president had never been over-fond of the army or any portion of the vast industrial military complex, something he frequently made clear when he was forced to undergo meetings of this sort. His explosive anger had come to be expected. The old man leapt to his feet and pounded the table with the flat of his hand. “How dare you back talk me? You will do as you’re told or I will have you cashiered out of the military and brought up on charges of treason!”